"If there's one thing I cannot stand it is to hear people talk right-down silly; I never could stand it, and I never shall. I wouldn't take this week's bill if it wasn't that we were so short; but if that there poor-rate isn't paid next week we shall have the brokers in, so paid it must be; them there poor-rates is demons; they'll turn me grey yet before I've done. But as for your next week's rent--we'll talk about that when it's due." "Are you proposing that I should run up debts with you, which I may never be able to pay? Do you call that sense?" "As it happens that's not what I'm proposing; though if I were as sure of most things as I am of that you'll pay me first chance you get, it might be better for me; but you can hardly say you've got no money when you've got plenty of things you can get money on." "I don't understand." "Look at your clothes--lovely some of them are; you can get money on them." "Get money on my clothes? How?" "Why, bless me, aren't there pawnbrokers? What do you think they're for? Taken to the proper place, by the proper person, you'd get a lot of money on those things of yours; I know. I always say that so long as you've something to pawn it's like having money at the bank." It was to Nora as though Miss Gibb's words had opened out to her a new world, of which she had not dreamed. In none of the country towns within miles of Cloverlea was there a pawnshop; to her knowledge she had never seen one; there were plenty within an easy stroll of Swan Street; she had passed and re-passed them, but her attention had not been called to what they were; they had escaped her notice. In her mind the word pawnshop stood for almost the lowest word in the scale of degradation; it was the drunkard's last hope; the friend of the felon; the resource of those to whom there was no resource left; that gate into the unthinkable which was associated only with despair. And that it should be suggested to her that she should enter a pawnbroker's den--she had heard it spoken of as a "den"--to "raise" money on the clothes she had worn yesterday, and had hoped to wear again to-morrow--in her blackest hours she had not anticipated such a fate for herself as that. The proposal actually appalled her; filled her with a fear of she knew not what; shamed her; hurled her from a pedestal into a morass. She stammered as she replied, conscious of the crass banality of what she was saying-- "I--I don't think I--I should like to pawn any--any of my things if--if I could help it." Miss Gibb's scorn was monumental, as if she resented something which the other implied, though it had been left unuttered. "And who do you think does like to pawn their things if they can help it? Do you suppose people pawn their boots because they've got their pockets full of money? I am surprised to hear you talk, I really am; should have thought at your time of life you'd have known better. Wouldn't you rather pawn your clothes than starve?"